Tourist helicopter crash kills three
THREE people were killed and three others wounded today when a helicopter used for tourist flights crashed in rainy weather on an island off the southern California coast, a local official said.
"The helicopter went down on the west end of Santa Catalina Island near Two Harbors, killing three people and injuring three others and causing a small fire that was quickly doused,” county fire dispatcher Melanie Flores said.
The crash occured in rain and fog near Banning House lodge, at a popular tourist area on the island 46km west of Los Angeles, she said.
Local media reported Federal Aviation Administration authorities said the chopper, which belonged to a tourism company, took off from the city of Long Beach, about 25km south of Los Angeles, on a scheduled ride out to the island and back.
A cause of the accident had yet to be determined, but authorities said weather played a “critical” factor in the crash.
Tags: catalina, crash, helicopter
Fuck that. We’ve been wearing headphones since the boom of the Sony Walkman cassette players in the… was it late 70s or early 80s? If this hasn’t been a problem until now, then it’s not the headphones but the morons wearing them.
They should require people to wear mirrors on their shoes…to watch for helicopters of course.
Well, at least he met his death listening to his favorite jams. But seriously though, how high did he have his music to not be able to hear a helicopter heading in his direction. Those things are freakin’ loud as hell.
If you’re killed by a crash-landing helicopter spinning out of control and crushing you in its errant path of destruction, it’s probably not your fault. If you’re killed by a train hitting you while you’re walking on train tracks with your headphones up so loud that a train horn doesn’t even pique your interest, it probably is your fault.The questions that the article really raises are ones that, while not sensationalist enough for most news articles, are pretty simple:Was the helicopter pilot okay?What caused the accident?Why would you base an entire article on the premise that “we imagine he had headphones on, but we have no idea”?Why, when something as uncommon as this occurs, does someone always step out of the woodwork and submit a bill to ban it entirely based on the one fringe case?When did it become the business of the government to prevent you from doing things that will kill you? Don’t parents have that responsibility for a few years, then relinquish it over to the usually capable hands of common sense?permalinkparo (0 children) [+]paro 1 point 4 days ago [-] When did it become the business of the government to prevent you from doing things that will kill you?Even suicide is illegal. Keep working sheeple.
Maybe they can put an emergency radio in iPods so that pilots can warn people.
It would be terrible if he had survived to produce more children who are mauled by helicopters crashing from the sky, you’re completely right
they need to make helicopters, cars, and airplanes MUCH LOUDER for safety, to avoid these kinds of horrible accidents. In fact, there are people who think the Toyota Prius, capable of operating at low speeds on electricity only, is a great DANGER to blind people!!
Well, we have two options here.. stop wearing headphones.. or stop crashing helicopters..
Who cares about headphones? This guy was just walking down the street, minding his own business…and a FUCKING HELICOPTER LANDED ON HIM. That’s the real story here.
I permanently tied my AC compressor to an airhorn to eliminate this pesky problem.
Two words:Natural Selection.
There’s no telling if headphones played any part in this particular incident, but there are a lot of idiots out there who have no idea how to correctly set the volume on their headphones.Yes, guy standing next to me in the elevator, whose currently-playing song I can clearly understand the lyrics to despite your having ear-bud style headphones, I’m talking to you.If people more than 5 feet away from you in a quite environment can tell whether or not there’s sound coming out of your in-ear headphones, then you have the volume up too high.
From now on I’ll be on the lookout for crashing ninja choppers!
Are there now so many “helicopter crashing in the middle of the street” incidents that we should genuinely worry about this?